While the women of Pussy Riot have earned nearly universal support from artists, politicians, activist groups and naked feminist groups (NSFW), one high profile politician wants the Russian court and Putin to be "applauded." Mayor Ed Koch, who presided over the city from 1978 to 1989, said this:

Supporters would take a different position if a black church were invaded and insulted. I recall when I was Mayor in 1989 and [an] AIDS activist group invaded St. Patrick's Cathedral and interrupted the Mass, throwing the Communion wafers. I think the decision of the Russian court to punish a hate crime was just and to be applauded, rather than condemned and ridiculed.

I do not believe the issue is properly one of freedom of expression. The right to free expression is not unlimited and does not mean one can say anything anywhere and at anytime. Further, Russia and most countries do not have embedded in their law the Constitutional protection of the First Amendment that we do. I for one am delighted they now punish religious hatred.

The church in question did urge leniency in sentencing, but did not shy away from condemning the actions of Pussy Riot. You can read his statement via Politicker.

Was it trespassing? I've heard they stormed the altar, but I've also read that they performed in front of it (I forget the goofy Catholic terminology for the area in front of the altar). As long as they didn't break into the church, it seems like it wouldn't be trespassing.

jesus Fucking christ, what an asshole. "Hate crime"-really?! Making fun of or lambasting "the church" is hatred of religion and should be considered a hate crime and punishable by 2years in prison? What an idiot, go on and die already so you can meet all your buddies up in heaven.

I'm not siding with Ed Koch, but Pussy Riot didn't just make fun of or lambast the church, they danced on the altar wearing masks and yelling. They were making a point, but I'm sure they knew there would be consequences for doing something like that. The punishment is absolutely extreme, and that's the more important issue.

So punish them for "disturbing the peace" or whatever but, once again, it was that one line that he said: "I for one am delighted they now punish religious hatred". I get the feeling like he's much more upset about their "religious hatred" than the infraction itself. How about we "punish" all the homophobes that come from his church?

I know I came out a little strong, probably because work is sucking today, but I understand what the issues are. It just pissed me off is all. Glad that he's able to side with a fucking dictator.

To paraphrase Neil DeGrasse Tyson, the real question is not why some people DO hate religion, but why so few people DO NOT hate religion.

If people break laws when motivated by religious hatred, prosecute them for the infraction. But the actual hatred, if not bigoted (i.e. my religion is better than yours), should be inconsequential. That guy who made the news for beating to death the creep who was molesting his daughter clearly HATED that fucker, but no one questioned the validity of that hatred and if anything it would have worked to his advantage at trial.

I think it's hard to hate a reified concept without it making its way to the people, because the concept is the people. This is like when some Christians say that they don't hate homosexuals, just homosexuality.

Nor is being black. My dad HATES many of my ideologies but we get along great (as long as we're not discussing those ideologies.) I love my coworkers but some have radically different views than me. You can hate opinions without hating the person.

Homosexuality became a constructed ideology in the '70s when liberal groups inexplicably chose to label and promote a sexual fetish as a legitimate "lifestyle" befitting of "equality". As far as I'm concerned, modern homosexuality is as much a spoon-fed and fabricated ideology as any religion, just on the opposite end of the political/social spectrum.

I still stand firmly behind everything I say. Just because I've explained the reasoning behind my beliefs extensively and eloquently enough that the more self-righteous and ill-informed members of this board can only rely on direct insults as a result of failing to find any further grounds to stand on doesn't mean I'm trolling. When you blindly pledge devotion to liberal ideologies or such notions as political correctness, don't be surprised when you finally smack face-first into a brick wall.

I love it when people will shamelessly distort opposing viewpoints because they just can't admit that they're wrong. The vast majority of my rants spoke specifically about homosexuality being a natural genetic trait, just not a particularly harmless one. But, you know, go ahead and alter whatever I said to fit it to your own advantage, I really don't mind. It's to be expected.

Ha, sorry man but I wasn't trying to "distort" your opposing viewpoint. I remembered that we argued about it is all. I was responding to what you said in *this* thread and I thought you were implying that homosexuality was *not* innate unlike heterosexuality. That is all.

I obviously don't read the comments on this site enough. I've always assumed that you were gay based on some of your statements and the way that I had you pictured in my mind when I did read your comments. I have nothing against homosexuality and I'm not trying to insult you. I've been freinds/aquaintances with a couple homosexuals throughout my life and I've always imagined you being a doppelganger of one that I knew about two years ago(one of the funniest people I've ever met in my life by the way). Guess I've never seen your anti-homosexual rants before. I disagree with you.

I am gay, which is what I base the entirety of my beliefs and observations upon. I'm not homophobic in the sense of hating gay people or working to discriminate against them in any way, I only hold the belief that homosexuality is a sexual dysfunction resulting from a natural chemical imbalance and that the growing cultural acceptance of homosexuality is a threat to the overall moral convictions of a proper society. That's all.

Ok, I understand and respect your opinion but, I don't agree with it. I don't think it's a sexual dysfunction at all and I don't think theres anything immoral about it. People can do what they want in their bedrooms as long as nobody is be forced to do something they don't want.

Mm-hmm, and I'm going to point out that rape, necrophilia, masturbation, copulation with infants, and harmful cross-species breeding are all present in the animal kingdom, all traits that we as humans should not only embrace in our society but fight for equal rights over, yes?

And - again - I've never once said that I find homosexuality to be unnatural, something I've reiterated to no end in my previous discussions (discussions which you yourself, porksoda, have been a part of), only that I find it to be-....you know, I've already told you all of this before, and if you're not going to listen, then why bother? I'll let you have fun pretending to sound smart by blatantly and knowingly misrepresenting an opposing viewpoint. Maybe one day you can run for office. :)

You basically said that you believe homosexuality to be unnatural, especially referring to it as a fetish and saying that "heterosexuality is an innate human trait." The problem that I have with you is that you ride the line, and you teeter what you have to say to favor your opinion in the current conversation, which in turn makes it *seem* like we're ignoring you. I just hope one day, you'll realize how wrong you are.

Fetishes *are* natural, they're the result of a chemical imbalance, and, in case you weren't aware, one doesn't just one day decide to *have* a chemical imbalance. So in one way, yes, it's natural because it occurs in our brain chemistry - the same brain chemistry which controls all our sexual urges and desires, heterosexual or otherwise - but it's also not natural because it's a mental dysfunction. It's naturally unnatural. I've explained this exact thing before.

There is no formula for what is "natural" and not natural. We indulge and ignore our natural tendencies subjectively all the time, who are you to decide what is an acceptable natural tendency and what is a dysfunction?

Yes there is. Natural just means occurring in nature. If the way your brain functions is altered by a chemical imbalance, that's perfectly natural! I realize you're trying to say "There's no such thing as normal!" but please use the proper terminology.

Morals. A society survives by its moral code, otherwise we'd descend into chaos and debauchery. How far are you willing to define an "acceptable natural tendency" when a person's behavior is influenced and altered by a chemical imbalance? For some people, a predisposition to - taking example from the farther end of the spectrum - physical violence, kleptomania or even pedophilia is a natural impulse owing to a mental dysfunction, but is that acceptable behavior based on a loose definition of "natural"? No. And why? Because of our morals, and the laws resulting from said morals.

Isn't that weird though? The pedophilia thing. I used to think the same thing about homosexuality as a young Christian boy, knowing that those who were homosexual couldn't help it, and same thing with pedophiles and other people who had paraphilias. I thought the answer to the question was really simple: "Just don't fuck then." As a 22 year old virgin, I've gotten along fine in life thus far not fucking. But I'd still like too, and uhh, well Skibz I actually think your opinion is entirely fabulous and a wonder to behold. It's really a great piece of art, I think, especially coming from someone who has confessed to being homosexual. Not being patronizing at all, and it's far more interesting than anything anyone else could possibly say on the subject.

But I also really couldn't care less that gay people are fucking each other. Pedophiles, however... well, I pretty much just think they have to live with their desire to molest small children and be cursed never indulge it. Them's the breaks when your sexual preference involves your partner not being a consenting adult, and instead being some 10 year old you somehow persuaded to perform fellatio.
Either way though, that's just me expressing something I believe to be an inherently obvious moral stance, whereas from your point of view, two men fucking is exactly just as morally reprehensible. And I'm completely fine with you thinking that way and have no desire to alter your principles.

Not just men, women as well. I don't hold that frat boy double-standard of "queers r gross but lezbians r HOTT!". I don't even find it "gross", obviously.

I only draw parallels between homosexuality and pedophilia as they're both innate sexual desires. People can't control what they're inherently sexually attracted to. Homosexuality is a victimless activity, I'm not denying that, but it's still in a very grey moral area, no different than consensual sexual activity between an older person and a 17 year-old, or between two siblings with no plans of reproducing. In some parts of the country, the latter two are totally legal, but does that really make them morally acceptable? I don't understand why homosexuality should be held in a higher moral light just because it doesn't happen to blatantly break any laws.

Because, Skibz, you seem not to have individuals as your concern, but you're thinking about society as a whole, and how it is affected by moral decay. You're thinking about the big picture, so you have legitimate reason to wonder about the morals of a victimless crime. Many other people do not care, and they say "Hey, that's their prerogative, let 'em do what they do. It affects me not." I actually am in the class of people who think individuals should be left to do what they do as long as their actions affect no one directly in a negative way. You're worried about how sexual deviancy affects everyone else indirectly. From your perspective, apologists such as I and many others are largely what's wrong with society and the human race in general, and we just may be. I can't claim to know the answer to that, and your philosophy does hold value.

I agree with pretty much everything you say here. You also have a good way about arguing without getting in a tizzy, I respect that. I am very much in the same class as you in regard to respecting the individual.

So is homosexuality. It frees a segment of society to engage in intellectually important tasks instead of chasing tail.

Consider it analogous to the presence of myopia in such a huge segment of the human population. If you were a simplistic dumbass, you'd THINK that being near-sighted would condemn you to starvation. But in reality, historically people with poor vision have been driven to do neat things like develop tools and writing because they can only see what's right in front of them.

That's really stretching it. How does homosexuality improve a society, then? And I mean homosexuality itself, not individual homosexuals, because when people like Alan Turing made their groundbreaking achievements, it certainly wasn't the result of what sexually aroused them.

Homosexuality improves a society by allowing more of us to die already. Your lovely mental disease is probably why there's 100,000 less people than there would be otherwise, or some other big made up statistic completely unfounded in research.

Nah, not sarcasm. It's more of a "we're all screwing over our own lives by screwing each other so much." And it's true that a large percentage of smart (or terrifyingly ugly) heterosexual people will continue to not have children. Probably me for instance, unless I give into my animal driven interests, rather than my rational ones. As a teenager, I thought of having a child to be irresponsible because you'd just be creating another vehicle of misery and forcing them to cope with the world. As a less depressed 20something, I just think that having children is... something a few of us should hold out on. Though I might just end up doing it anyway, who knows.

You were just talking about near-sighted people developing tools and writing. Is that not a purpose that benefits a society? Whatever. Then, how does homosexuality benefit the species? You still haven't been very clear on that.

It benefits society because it benefits the species for the same reasons homosexuality seems to. It skims off chunk of the population for non-preponderant activities. Seriously, just consider the obvious: Hetero couples spend a huge amount of time and energy rearing kids. The village needs a medicine man, or a priest (the traditional release valve in the West), or an Alan Turing who isn't part of that cycle. Aldous Huxley (I think?) said an intellectual is someone who has found something more interesting than sex -- by their minority status and the ingrained hostility toward them, historically homosexuals have kind of been forced to find things more interesting than sex.

I only have a minute to post this, so sorry if it's a bit rushed, but anyway. There's a line of thinking in evolutionary biology called the 'Gay Uncle Theory'. It basically holds:

A) In most human societies, child-rearing is incredibly time-consuming and resource intensive. Humans are rather unique in the animal world (even amongst our closest relatives) in that we have an incredibly long adolescence period, and spend much of it utterly hapless. An infant chimpanzee, for example, can cling to it's mother's fur mere hours after being born; it takes a human baby months to develop the necessary coordination and strength be able to accomplish the the same task. As such, human children require much more direct care than the young of other creatures.

B) According to Hamilton's Rule, social groups which exhibit altruistic behavior are more competitive than 'selfish' social groups. Imagine a pair of bands of early humans, Group 1, and Group 2. Individuals in Group 1 look out for each other; they expend considerable personal resources on the welfare of the group. Group 2 is the opposite; the composite individuals only look out for their own interests, and do not expend resources on the group. Mathematical models and observed data consistently show that groups like Group 1 will outperform groups like Group 2 in longevity and overall fitness, and therefore are more likely to pass on their genes and whatnot.

C) It is therefore in the groups best interests to have individuals who do not, themselves, reproduce, and instead expend their resources on raising the children of other members of the group. And frankly, the easiest way to keep suckas from poppin' out younglings is for said suckas to not possess the sexual proclivities that beget reproduction. Social insects like bees do it by completely suppressing the reproductive capabilities of the non-queen bees‚??for humans, however (and most of our close relatives) sex plays a massive role in social interaction, and is vital to maintaining group cohesion. Hence, gays.

Now, this model is mostly used to account for early human social structures; hunter-gatherers, and the like. But many of the same social and economic pressures (namely resources-intensive child-rearing) also pop up in post-industrial societies like ours. Furthermore, with burgeoning overpopulation and an increasing environmental impact from said population increase, it is therefore‚??similarly to our early human ancestors‚??advantageous for our society to encourage pair-bonds (or other stable social structures) that do not carry a chance of reproduction. And, given our hard-wired our brains are for sexin', large-scale celibacy ain't really an option.

TLDR; We got to many kids, not enough parents. Gays are good for society.

But anyway, you've mentioned a couple times how you view homosexuality as 'morally' wrong. May I ask what moral standard to base this upon?

Damn, I'm way too buzzed to eloquently respond to all of that, so I'll just have to base it off your "TL;DR" summary. Judging from your use of proper grammar, I'll automatically assume you were making some salient points and I'll blindly respect your opinions on it, though I still believe there's something inherently wacky about the concept of homosexuals being crucial to the species to control population, especially since there are so many other genetic factors which have the same results (infertility, etc.). Are there any reports on this from scientific professionals? I'd be willing to read them.

The concept of morals is a gray area, since it seems to vary from person to person and culture to culture. Mine are pretty much set in traditional "prude" mode, as I object to most overt forms of sexuality: I don't approve of masturbation, I don't approve of sexuality being glorified in the media, and I'm typically skeptical of most sexual activities outside of "traditional" male-female relations. I've already explained it at length in previous threads (linked above, if you wanted to take the time to read them), but I believe that a culture which embraces or promotes open sexuality - including homosexuality - progressively weakens a society's moral convictions to a point where there will inevitably be no more morals. As a functional civilization, we have to uphold a standard of decency to keep from collapsing into debauchery.

Funny thing: I was rushed because I was on my way to a bar! PROTIP to anyone reading this: if the bartender puts a shot in front of you, and in response to queries regarding its composition tells you to stop asking questions, run the fuck away

Seriously, they are trying to kill you. And I'm drunk as shit.

At any rate.

My TLDR should have read "Kids are expensive; Gays are good", in all honesty. The salient point was not about overpopulation, it was rather about the most efficient use of resources regarding child-rearing. To get all mathy:

K = ( P + S ) / C

Where K represents the overall quality a child's upbringing‚??at least, in terms of brute resources. P represents the amount of resources a child's parents can provide, S is the amount of resources provided by the society at large, and C represents the minimal resource allocation necessary to ensure a quality upbringing of a given child. If K ≥ 1, then the kid's probably doing all right. This is so over-simplified it's not even funny, BUT STILL.

You know what S needs? More numbers!

S = ( ( P1 - C1 ) + P2 ) / T

In this case, P1 represents the overall resource output of individuals with children, and C1 represents the amount of resources they spend on their children. P2 is individuals without children. T is the total number of chillins what need stuff in our little scenario; as such, the output to S is an average for society's contribution to the rearing of an average child. Let's put it all together!

K = ( P + ( ( P1 - C1 ) + P2 ) / T ) / C

Well, shit. That's a lot of variables. Anyway, the upshot is that the more people that do not possess children and still contribute to society, the more resources are floating around to raise the children that do exist. DINKs (double income, no kids) are awesome for our civilization. And, since evolution has given us a perfectly wonderful avenue to maximize the number of such households in homosexuality (as I went over in my previous post) it'd be a damn shame to not follow up on that.

But back to that whole morality thing. You're essentially ascribing a moralistic requirement to the fitness of a civilization. Forgive me if I am misinterpreting your stance, but what you seem to be saying is civilization requires a specific moral foundation‚??a given society can only exist so long as it conforms to a given set of social mores. And then, if said society deviates from those mores, it crumbles. In particular, you seem to be conflating sexual chastity specifically with morality in general.

This is a profoundly ahistorical viewpoint. The ancient Greeks, for example, practiced homosexuality as a matter of course; their civilization not only flourished for centuries, but laid the foundation for everything we consider 'civilized'‚??from art, to architecture, to philosophy and music, the Greeks provided the framework on which we still build. The Romans maintained a continent-spanning empire for four centuries in which, again, homosexuality (or at least bisexuality; a feller was still expected to make some heirs) was commonplace. It wasn't until the Roman Empire adopted Christianity as it's official religion (along with that faith's less permissive attitudes towards gender roles) that it went into decline. Frankly, if you really want a civilization-killer, Christian morality has a much higher body-count than buttsex.

But quips aside, I'd not ascribe the fall of the Roman Empire to Christianity; it's a fuck of a lot more complicated than that. My point is that 'morality'‚??especially of the sexual kind‚??has very little to do with the capability of a civilization to thrive. It's all economics and history, hombre.

I'm still a bit foggy on where your morals come from. Simply saying "I'm a prude" is a nonsense statement. Why are you a prude? What's your justification? You seem to be grasping for some sort of utilitarian framework for your prudishness, but I think we both know that's spurious, at best.

Personally, I'm a secular humanist-type fellow. I believe that all hew-mons (and, by extension, any similarly-sentient critter) is deserving of a basic level of moral consideration. Therefore, I hold that any action that causes suffering amongst individuals of moral consideration is 'bad'. By converse, any action that decreases suffering among such individuals is 'good' (again, incredibly simplified). As such, actions may be ranked based upon the amount of suffering they cause/prevent‚??stabbing a dude is bad, giving a baby a teddy bear is good, etc. In that framework, homosexuality is of equal moral validity to heterosexuality; if a couple folks wanna bone, who gives a shit?

I don't see why objecting to overt sexuality is that shocking a concept. A society doesn't benefit from hedonism, there has to be certain levels of moral "prudishness" to keep us from devolving into 'Caligula' territory, and though that seems like a stretch, I honestly don't believe it's that far to go with the amount of sex and sexuality glorified in our media.

I don't see homosexuality as really that far removed from any given sexual fetish activity. Sure, anybody in the privacy of their own home can engage in, say, sex with a dead fish or masturbating to the child models in a Toys 'R' Us catalog and it doesn't hurt anybody, but does that really make it okay? It may be legal, but I just have a hard time believing that people who indulge in deviant sexual fantasies/behavior are capable of living normal lives and contributing productively to society. I view it as a chemical imbalance which, like any mental illness, is better being treated to improve their quality of life.

"It may be legal, but I just have a hard time believing that people who indulge in deviant sexual fantasies/behavior are capable of living normal lives and contributing productively to society."

So you believe that, say, the Sacred Band of Thebes, a military unit comprised entirely of 150 pairs of male lovers did not contribute meaningfully to Thebian society? Or the Two-Spirit People (individuals of either biological sex that took on the gender-roles of the other) of various Native American cultures were superfluous and harmful to their society? Alan Turing? Stephen mothafucking Fry?

The fact is, homosexuality is not 'deviant' behavior. It is simply one facet of the overall continuum of human sexual expression, one that has, historically, been perfectly accepted. The overly restrictive sexual attitudes of the last few centuries (specifically in the west) are the exception, not the rule.

I would like you to find me one civilization that fell due to flaws 'morality'. Just one. I'll wait.

You don't know me or what my beliefs are. If someone stormed a Mosque or Temple and played some shitty song you really think that I would want them sent to prison for 2 years? Are you fucking kidding me?

If this type of thing happened to BLAAACK PEOPLE it'd be an entirely different story! I for one am completely distraught by the plight of the white man! Thank God Russia's standing up for our rights, or we may lose our number one spot in the eternal race struggle!

I'm really sick of people really caring about being the greatest all of the time. Maybe the Gnostics will be the new grandest religion. Stop caring. The bible says your religion isn't supposed to be loved throughout the world anyway. You're the underdogs, and the cult of antichrist will hold prominence.

But your statement is pretty true nonetheless. There's a poster in all over the New York train stations that says something like "19,081 Islamic motivated terrorist attacks have been committed since 9/11. It's not Islamophobia. It's Islamorealism." My friend found this repulsive. I agreed in some way, and found the statistic fishy. Then I thought if there were the Christian version of that: "Fuckin' millions of people have been killed by Christians since 200AD, man!" it'd effect nobody because it's the same atheistic platitudinous Misanthropee shit we're all sick of hearing anyway. So I thought, perhaps more inflammatory would be a "Kill them Jews!" poster, especially in that area.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that people will care about sacrilege towards a certain religion depending on what era it is and what your location is. Right now, nobody cares about Christianity, and nobody should. They're done. It's over. The rest still have a little steam left in them, and will continue to create controversy in which people would actually have emotional (mostly fear or anger driven) stake.

If you think Islam and Christianity are done and only have "a little steam" left, you are fucking insane. The clash of civilizations is just beginning -- unless we proactively stop it by destroying those religions.

The stat on Islamic terrorism is correct, though disingenuously stated. Islam is the catalyst for suicide bombings, but anger toward Western imperialism is the impetus. You would not have suicide bombers without Islam, but you WOULD still have violence struggle against foreign occupiers. It would just have a different flavor.

I'd be HUGELY in support of black churches being invaded and insulted for their almost-universal virulent homophobia. Particularly the Prosperity Gospel ones.

It's true that the law is the law, but giving religion special protections different from any other business or NPO is silly. If "religious hatred" is a special type of crime, I demand hate crime protection from (insert trivial personal minutiae here). If I make a scene in a church it should have no legal distinction from making a scene in a Wal-Mart.

I'd say that many, if not a majority of Democrats, hold views that would be described as "conservative." Not on this particularly, but on our military presence around the world, our indifference to climate change, and a lot of the fundamental problems with our economic system. There's only one thing that could make a career politician's words matter less: retirement. Fuck this asshole.

I've heard this position in a few places, notably at a friend's wedding reception this weekend just gone. Had to explain that one of the women is Orthodox herself, and the protest wasn't an attack on the church, but a protest against a particular church policy, that of unflinching support for Putin.

Having said that, I don't see why religious organisations should be offered special protection under the law. Individuals in a free society must be free to believe or disbelieve as they see fit. Persecuting an individual for their beliefs is a hate crime. Attacking those beliefs is not. All ideas should face open and unflinching critique, should any individual see fit. That's how you work out which ideas are good; you test them against other ones.

"The right to free expression is not unlimited and does not mean one can say anything anywhere and at anytime." There's so much wrong with this comment! Why even bring it up when it doesn't apply to Russian policy? ARGH!

"Religious hatred" is the bombing of planned parenthood clinics, pastors inciting their flocks to think their gay or even "effeminate" children aren't good people. It is not a harmless, slightly disturbing, art performance. Fuck everybody.

"Supporters would take a different position if a black church were invaded and insulted."

What a completely stupid and irrelevant fucking statement to make. Supporters MIGHT take a different position for the fear of being misinterpreted as racially aggravated, maybe. But I seriously doubt supporters would take a different position if, say, Pussy Riot were black and a "black church" were invaded.